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The past six days have been days of firsts for NASCAR Cup Series rookie Austin Cindric. The start of his first full-time Cup season. His first career Cup Series win. His first Daytona 500 win. And now, his first career pole.

Cindric won the pole for the Wise Power 400 at Auto Club Speedway, surviving an attrition-filled practice and qualifying session to post a lap time of 41.226 seconds (174.647 MPH), beating Erik Jones for the top starting spot by over a tenth of a second.

Practice and qualifying quickly and dramatically proved how difficult the Next Gen car is to drive, as each session featured as many self-spins and cars on edge as has been seen in many years. With the Next Gen car featuring little side force to aerodynamically correct the car when it gets sideways, 10 drivers in total ended up spinning or crashing.

Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, William Byron, and Brad Keselowski all spun or hit the wall on their pole runs in the second round of qualifying. Kevin Harvick, Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace, and Christopher Bell all spun in practice, while Aric Almirola had to abort his qualifying run after sliding sideways and saving his car off Turn 4. Getting the worst of it all was Ross Chastain, who shot up the track in Turn 4 and pounded the outside wall in a hard crash.

Harvick, Chastain, Wallace, and Justin Haley did not make qualifying runs. Kurt Busch's car failed pre-qualifying technical inspection three times, and he was not permitted to make a qualifying run and will have to serve a pass-through penalty after the start of Sunday's race. Car chief David Bryant has also been ejected from the race weekend.

In addition to Busch, the cars of Keselowski, Wallace, Ryan Blaney, and B.J. McLeod all failed tech inspection twice and will lose pit selection.

Wise Power 400 starting lineup

1 - #2 - Austin Cindric (R)
2 - #43 - Erik Jones
3 - #18 - Kyle Busch
4 - #11 - Denny Hamlin
5 - #16 - Daniel Hemric
6 - #12 - Ryan Blaney
7 - #22 - Joey Logano
8 - #9 - Chase Elliott
9 - #6 - Brad Keselowski
10 - #24 - William Byron
11 - #8 - Tyler Reddick
12 - #19 - Martin Truex Jr.
13 - #5 - Kyle Larson
14 - #48 - Alex Bowman
15 - #99 - Daniel Suarez
16 - #3 - Austin Dillon
17 - #47 - Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
18 - #42 - Ty Dillon
19 - #20 - Christopher Bell
20 - #17 - Chris Buescher
21 - #41 - Cole Custer
22 - #21 - Harrison Burton (R)
23 - #34 - Michael McDowell
24 - #14 - Chase Briscoe
25 - #7 - Corey LaJoie
26 - #38 - Todd Gilliland (R)
27 - #51 - Cody Ware
28 - #77 - Josh Bilicki
29 - #15 - Garrett Smithley
30 - #78 - B.J. McLeod
31 - #10 - Aric Almirola
32 - #4 - Kevin Harvick
33 - #1 - Ross Chastain
34 - #23 - Bubba Wallace
35 - #31 - Justin Haley
36 - #45 - Kurt Busch